Legislative Gamesmanship

School Administrator, Nov, 1998 by Kerry White

From eligibility standards to on-field behavior, state legislators are muscling their way into how school sports are conducted

Danny Wright, a 6-foot-7 center and star basketball player for Santaluces High School in Palm Beach County, Fla., spent the first month of the season last winter on the bench, barred from playing because, according to the state, his grades weren't up to snuff.

At least, that's what school officials who put him there thought.

Confusion over how to apply new academic eligibility requirements passed by the Florida legislature only months before the school year began led to the benching of Wright and about 50 other athletes in the county.

The Florida High School Activities Association, the independent agency that oversees all the state's interscholastic sports, eventually cleared up the interpretation problem, allowing the sidelined athletes to return to their respective sports. But parents and coaches were incensed over the bumpy start to the winter sports season, and Palm Beach school officials heard their complaints loud and clear.

"Parents had paid to send their kids to sports camp, coaches put them through practice, the whole route, only to find out that these kids can't play" and then that they are in fact, eligible, says Glenn Heyward, principal of Santaluces High. "It was confusing. We were getting directions from all over the place"--he state legislature, the state activities association and local officials. "Ultimately, we're the ones to blame for following what we thought were the rules."

Those rules, Heyward and other Florida school officials say, are increasingly being established by state lawmakers.

Debating Minutia

Secondary school sports traditionally have been a local concern governed by independent state activities associations like the FHSAA, whose boards are typically a mix of principals and athletic staff. But increasingly, as in the new academic standards in the Sunshine State, interscholastic sports are becoming fodder for state lawmakers. School administrators everywhere should heed the change.

"In the last couple of years there's been an array of [school] sports-related legislation coming from state capitols," says Daniel Nestel, assistant director of government relations for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Nestel says he sees a "continued focus" in states on athletes' academic eligibility, home-schooling, safety issues and coaching certification, sportsmanship and drug testing.

He and others attribute the torrent of new school sports legislation to lawmakers' increased role in school finance, education reform and school choice issues. So in addition to rolling out policies detailing everything from school taxes to school curriculum, more and more state lawmakers are debating the minutia of interscholastic athletics--who plays, when they play, how they play, where they play.

"There's been more legislative intervention with education systems across the board, and just as expected, high school sports fall in the mix," says Robert F. Kanaby, executive director of the Kansas City, Mo.,-based National Federation of State High School Associations, which has served as the service and administrative center for state activity associations since 1920.

Bruce Hunter, AASA's director of government relations, credits the bottom line--what he calls the "Golden Rule of politics"--for lawmakers' relatively new domain. "He who gives the gold makes the rule," Hunter says. With schools relying less on their local government to fund schools and more on the state, leaders on the state level have a bigger say in how school dollars are being spent, athletics and other extracurricular activities included, he says.

Most people date legislative involvement in school sports to 1984, when the Texas legislature approved a law pushed by businessman H. Ross Perot that required students to earn passing grades in their classes or lose the opportunity to practice or play with their school sports teams. That law made national headlines, and today several states including Florida, and most recently Iowa and Ohio, are imposing such policies, most of which extend to students participating in extracurricular activities.

The measure in Ohio was particularly unsettling. The state legislature last winter mandated that all school districts impose a minimum grade point average and a "no pass, no play" policy for interscholastic participation. But the stricter standards for eligibility did not apply to parochial and private schools, who nonetheless compete for state championships with the public schools.

Clair Muscaro, commissioner of the Ohio High School Athletic Association, faulted the legislation for creating a "tilted" playing surface. His association successfully lobbied the state legislature to extend the measures to nonpublic schools.

"It's all about creating a level playing field," he says. "More and more lawmakers are getting involved [in school sports], but I wish they would let us address their concerns. We're about as democratic as you can get. And our officials know schools firsthand-they re in schools everyday."